Startup Failures in Sweden

The battery startup that was supposed to free Europe from Chinese supply chains. It couldn't make batteries fast enough.

Blast AI that overestimated savings by 4x and triggered compliance incidents at Kiruna.

Refinancing your debt was a great idea until the regulators and inflation hit at once.

The carbon accounting startup that couldn't survive the ESG backlash and market crowding.

The Swedish EV truck startup that built a safer city delivery truck — and ran out of money before scaling

Sweden's fintech infrastructure builder couldn't build enough revenue to survive the funding winter.

Sweden's live video commerce platform lost 97% of its value as brands proved unwilling to pay for interactive shopping

Priced above Fivetran with a worse product — 14 investors said no.

Sweden's food waste marketplace had the mission but Too Good To Go had the execution.

The European digital doctor that raised $500M to conquer six countries — then closed five when the pandemic-era demand disappeared and every consultation still lost money

Sweden's fast fashion darling with €300M in sales filed for bankruptcy when influencer marketing costs met reality.

A Swedish gaming roll-up burned SEK 2B on acquisitions and collapsed when rates rose.

Sweden's subscription-cancel startup couldn't cancel its own death spiral.

Sweden's freelancer accounting app had 20,000 users but couldn't find 20,000 reasons to pay.

Sweden's tightly regulated drug pricing killed digital pharmacy delivery economics.

Europe's most valuable fintech lost 85% of its $45.6B valuation in a single down round — the largest VC devaluation in history

Europe's most valuable startup lost 85% of its valuation in 13 months as interest rates ended the BNPL party

Sweden's leading P2P lending platform raised $50M then wound down as credit losses and rate rises killed the model

Europe's most funded digital health company raised £560M to build a pan-European virtual GP—then laid off 400 people as the post-COVID telehealth contraction exposed its burn rate.

Blackstone-backed oat milk IPO'd at $13B — lost 90% of value as food inflation and competition hit

Swedish indie-creator marketplace acquired by Shopify and shuttered a year later.

Swedish load testing veteran killed its own product to reboot as open-source k6 — and the bet paid off for Grafana.

An online sales and marketing platform that helped salespeople predict and analyze sales using CRM data and online signals.

Readmill built the most beautiful e-reader app with social highlighting. Dropbox acquired it in March. Shut it down in July.

Won Apple Design Award for beautiful social reading — but Kindle, iBooks, and Google Books owned ebook distribution; Readmill couldn't acquire books through its app

The Swedish studio behind Bionic Commando: Rearmed went bankrupt weeks after their 3D reboot flopped — despite the remaster being one of 2008's best-reviewed games.

Sweden's SME payments startup outcompeted by the two unicorns born in the same city

CAKE built the most beautiful electric off-road motorcycles in the world — then went bankrupt in 2024 because beautiful hardware at tiny volume is not a business

Danish fitness tracking pioneer raised $40M, was acquired by Under Armour for $85M, and watched its 80 million users disappear when UA killed the app in 2021.

Mobile insurance pioneer for emerging markets acquired and dismantled after 13 years

Swedish medical AI for radiology ran out of capital waiting for EU MDR certification

The Scandinavian quick-commerce startup that launched too late into a dying category and shut down in 2023 as every major European q-commerce operator pulled back

The Swedish e-scooter startup that raised 300 million dollars to make micromobility sustainable and never got there

Immunovia spent 15 years developing a blood test to detect pancreatic cancer early — then its pivotal trial failed in 2022 and the stock lost 80 percent overnight, ending the clinical program that had raised 150 million dollars.

Andreessen Horowitz-backed Swedish startup let you gift retailer rewards through Facebook and discovered that digital gifting is not a habit.

Gothenburg's green acrylic startup couldn't scale bio-based plastics economics to commercial viability

The Swedish parcel delivery unicorn that merged with Budbee and then filed for bankruptcy together

Swedish indie beauty brand digital DTC experiment failed against Sephora's influencer machine

Swedish autonomous electric freight pioneer that convinced logistics giants to pilot its trucks but ran out of road before commercial scale.

Stockholm's sustainable beauty marketplace ran into unit economics death by a thousand SKUs

Airmee raised €30M to make same-day delivery standard in Swedish e-commerce — then sold at distress to PostNord as the unit economics of same-day delivery proved impossible to crack

Copenhagen personal finance startup raised 6 million dollars to help Danish consumers understand their spending and shut down when it could not convert understanding into revenue.

Starbreeze rode the success of Payday 2 into a reckless acquisition and VR spending spree — ending in a police raid over insider trading allegations, CEO arrest, and a Swedish reconstruction filing in January 2019.

Dot-com fashion pioneer raised $135M and burned it in 18 months before a single profitable order

Polish beacon IoT pioneer faded as location-aware retail never materialized at scale

Estonian IoT connectivity platform for e-bikes acquired as micromobility market consolidated

Europe's first listed P2P lender collapsed in fraud scandal

Swiss algorithmic stablecoin protocol shut down 18 months after $30M ICO